Biz Contact Mgr. Question

[unHookt]

I'm in the process of testing Office 2k3 right now, and I have run into some problems with Business Contact Manager. My goal is to eliminate the need/use for/of a 3rd party application to handle sales contact management tasks and functionality.

Right now, the business is operating in Outlook XP and utilizing/sharing the calendar, contacts, tasks, etc. But the President of the company is using ACT for its sales functionality, and he wants to move everyone over to ACT for use of the contact and sales management features.

Seems like a waste of $ and additional administrative pain to manage ACT on top of Exchange/Outlook if we can get these features in a MS-native application.

Is it true that Business Contact Manager will not function if your are in an Exchange environment? If so, this would be a major drawback to us, and I would assume that other users might feel the same.

Any ideas what the rationale might be for development of the product in this manner? What's the strategy at MS on this one??

Thanks in advance!

 

[jabhawk]

I have been in touch with MS and they state that BCM cannot be used with Exchange unless you are using Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 with a patch. They recommend creating a seperate profile without Exchange to support the tool.

Check the Faq page under the topic "Can I use Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager with my e-mail system?"

http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/contactmanager/prodinfo/faq.mspx

Full text is :

Q. Can I use Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager with my e-mail system?
A. Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager is designed to work with POP3-, IMAP-, or HTML-based e-mail systems, which are common in most small businesses. The Business Contact Manager functionality is not enabled when Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager is used in combination with Microsoft Exchange Server. It is, though, enabled for Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 and hosted Exchange Server after you install a patch.

Jon Black
Syncom Pharmacuticals
jblack@syncom.net

Jonthan A Black